About Yto Barrada

Despite also working in sculptural installations and increasingly in film, Yto Barrada describes herself as primarily a photographer. For her well known series “A Life Full of Holes: The Strait Project” (1998-2003), Barrada photographed the Strait of Gibraltar and life (domestic scenes, construction sites, natural landscapes, urban environments) on its Moroccan side. Her focus on holes, ditches, and impassable roads symbolizes the obstacles faced by Africans who wish to enter Europe. Plate Tectonics (2004), a wooden model of the world with movable continents, similarly focuses on the divides between continents. Barrada’s interest in geographic borders stems from personal history—she was born and raised in France to Moroccan parents and studied in Tangier, Paris, and New York, acutely aware that her dual citizenship endows her with the rare freedom of mobility.